Thursday, September 28, 2006

Guardian's Gaudy and Shoddy Journalism

The Guardian, which used to be a liberal British newspaper, has become the full-fledged Pravda of the British hard Left, especially when it comes to its one-sided bashing of Israel. Like Pravda, it will not publish alternative points of view, even when the alternative point of view seeks to correct willful mis-statements of fact. It's gotten to the point where a reader simply cannot trust the credibility of the reporting.

Two recent incidents, in as many months, regarding total distortions of my own writing simply serve to illustrate a much larger problem. I have heard similar stories from others.

Most recently, The Guardian published an op-ed devoted to an article I had written. The writer turned virtually everything I had argued on its head. Before we get to the specifics, let's get to the Der Stuermer-like characterization of my appearance that became a centerpoint of the articles. The author of the article, Henry Porter, claimed that he saw me on television in 2001 "looking like Animal, the wildman drummer from The Muppet Show." What Porter did not know is that I have been clean-shaven with short hair for a decade, thus undermining Porter's claim that he actually saw me on TV. But I suppose I'll always be, to people like Porter, the stereotypical hairy, wild-eyed Jew.

Porter then writes that, although I say I am against torture, I really am all in favor of torture. Apparently, despite the hundreds of times that I've written and said publicly and clearly that I am against torture, Porter believes that he knows better - that he can read my mind or discern my views from my Animal-like face.

His third point was that "Dershowitz doesn't understand that [i]f governments are given powers, they will almost always find a way to abuse them." In fact, not only do I make this cautionary point, but it is a large part of my article. I write: It would also be relatively easy to combat terrorism if our government had earned more of our trust over the years. But most governments - even most liberal democracies - have tended to abuse extraordinary powers given to them during emergencies. And then I launch into a list of examples, with suggestions as to how to prevent them recurring.

Significantly, Porter manages to contradict himself in the span of less than half a page. First he takes me to task for setting up a straw argument against "liberal fundamentalists," when he insists that he "cannot think of one who believes that all rights are unqualified, that all freedoms are absolute." And then he concludes his rant by himself advocating the fundamentalist position that "[f]reedom is the thing which patrols and constrains government and that is why it is not amenable to compromise."

I WAS compelled to write a letter to the editor correcting the many inaccuracies and pointing out the inappropriate ad hominem attack on my appearance (or rather, the appearance that the author assumed I have). The Guardian refused to print my letter.

The first incident, which took place in June, occurred when the Guardian published a review of my most recent book, Preemption: A Knife that Cuts Both Ways. I should say from the start that it was not the negative tone or conclusion of the review that bothered me. I write, on average, a book every year, and I have been an outspoken Jew and criminal defense lawyer for decades. Therefore, having a thick skin is a prerequisite of everything I do. What amazed me about this article, though, was the fact that the reviewer simply lied about what was in my book. She made things up. She said the book was about something it wasn't about. She said I took positions when I explicitly wrote the opposite in my book.

Why would a book reviewer go to such great lengths to defame me and to falsify what I wrote? After all, I am a liberal Democrat and have spent my career as a law professor, author, and defense lawyer fighting for civil liberties and the rights of the accused. In fact, my book is precisely about how to take the lessons of liberal democracy marked by transparency and accountability and apply them in a world that increasingly relies on preventive and preemptive criminal justice procedures and international military interventions. One would think that these credentials and this topic would endear me to the Guardian.

But I am also, as I wrote above, an outspoken Jew and Zionist, and I wrote a section in my book about Israel. It was supportive of some, and critical of others of Israel's preemptive military actions. And it is just this sort of balanced assessment of Israel's behavior coupled with a refusal to demonize the Jewish state that sends Guardian writers into apoplectic fits. Liberalism and Zionism are not considered mutually exclusive in America. In fact, they are complementary. The prevailing view at the Guardian is to the contrary.

LETS LOOK at what the Guardian actually said. The reviewer of my book, a woman named Louise Christian who claims to be a lawyer but who demonstrates none of the requisite analytical skills of the profession, immediately seized upon my section on Israel and focused on it for the majority of her article.

She characterizes the book as "an attempt to justify the Iraq war and even the actions of the state of Israel" (which the author, a Harvard law professor, obsessively admires) [emphasis added].

First, notice the "even" before Israel, showing that the author assumes the actions of Israel to be particularly indefensible. Second, I do not try to justify Israel's actions. I analyze its actions, and I conclude that some of them were justified and beneficial, while others were wrongheaded and unnecessary.

Finally, had Christian read the book, she would know that I opposed the war in Iraq. She apparently assumed that because I support Israel's right to exist, I also supported America's war in Iraq. It's a telling assumption.

Not only does Christian mischaracterize the topics of my book and my positions. She goes right ahead and lies about what I say. For example, she writes, "In its concluding chapter the book goes so far as to suggest that theories of chromosomal abnormality should be pursued as predictive of violent crime to justify long-term detention."

In fact, I say just the opposite. Christian is referring to an appendix in which I reproduce an article I published in 1975. The whole thrust of the article is categorically against the use of the XYY chromosome to predict violence, since I demonstrate conclusively that the XYY karyotype is not predictive. Here is what I say: "Nor is it likely that the XYY karyotype, even in combination of other factors, could be used to predict violence. There is simply no hard evidence establishing that any combination of factors can accurately spot a large percentage of future violent criminals without also including an unsatisfactorily number and percentage of false positives."

How on Earth could Christian transform my strong opposition to using chromosomes as criminal predictors to support? She simply reversed my position. This cannot be a simple mistake. It is plainly a willful deception of her readers.

A MENDACIOUS review is one thing, but what's worse is that The Guardian refused to correct its mistake. When I wrote a letter to the editor refuting Christians's blatant lies, Alan Rusbridger, editor of The Guardian, responded that he could not publish my letter. The reason he gave was that my letter was too long. And so I responded that I would cut my letter to any length he asked. But The Guardian persisted in refusing to let me set the record straight.

It would be unthinkable for an American or Israeli newspaper to publish a full-blown attack on an individual without at least extending the right to reply in the letters page. The Guardian did precisely that to me, and twice in a single summer.

Perspective is one thing, but there's something very wrong with any paper that would publish and then stand behind factual inaccuracies in the service of a political agenda. That sort of cavalier attitude toward the truth is more fitting of a Stalinist newspaper than of Britain's liberal newspaper of note. It's discouraging to see such a prominent and previously honorable publication abandon its standards so readily.

I challenge The Guardian to defend or even explain its journalistic decision to stand by the demonstrable falsehoods and defamations of its writers.

About Me

American born, my wife and I moved to Israel in 1970. We have lived at Shiloh together with our family since 1981. I was in the Betar youth movement in the US and UK. I have worked as a political aide to Members of Knesset and a Minister during 1981-1994, lectured at the Academy for National Studies 1977-1994, was director of Israel's Media Watch 1995-2000 and currently, I work at the Menachem Begin Heritage Center in Jerusalem. I was a guest media columnist on media affairs for The Jerusalem Post, op-ed contributor to various journals and for six years had a weekly media show on Arutz 7 radio. I serve as an unofficial spokesperson for the Jewish Communities in Judea & Samaria.